


Return

by bluewoodensea



Series: ask him to dance [3]
Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Post-War, References to Death and Violence, Reunions, fandom typical disregard for the real vets' post-war lives, very light M rating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:48:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27857806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluewoodensea/pseuds/bluewoodensea
Summary: He thought about writing to Joe often, in Germany and Austria, in the times he spent alone in the Austrian woods. Even once the war ended, he never did. Instead he’s here, four months after getting back to the States, outside the door he thinks is the right door.-probably works best to read the (relatively short) preceding fics first but ydy
Relationships: Earl McClung/Joseph Toye
Series: ask him to dance [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1026912
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	Return

**Author's Note:**

> I resisted the possibility of writing a third part to this series. Then I wrote it anyway. Feel free to come and laugh at me on [tumblr](https://onelungmcclung.tumblr.com).

**Pennsylvania, 1946**

McClung thinks this is the place. 

Wide street, a line of doors in front of him, view of a mill off to his left. There’s no one around to ask, no one around to ask him what he’s doing here.

It took him some time to find the place. He’s been in Reading maybe an hour now. With him is his barracks bag: a change of clothes, a street map, a flask of water, a comb, a toothbrush, a shaving kit, a sleeping bag if he needs one. Wartime and peacetime definitions of travelling light are different. He’s still aware of the weight that’s missing. He likes the newfound ease of its missing.

He left Europe a few months back. Headed to Colville first, stayed there a while. Then he travelled back down to Pennsylvania, to here. He has the sense of steeling himself.

He’s been trying not to think about it for long enough, over a year. Might as well confront it. As long as they were fighting, he kept his mind on the task at hand. Now there’s no war to fight, no task at hand, no good reason to ignore Joe Toye any longer.

He’s never been able to write to Joe. He got the address off Babe, while they were still stationed in Austria: Babe had written to Bill and asked him. Easier that way, easier than asking for it himself. And Babe had probably put that down to politeness or diffidence or some bullshit like that, rather than what it was, secretiveness and uncertainty.

He pushes his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and waits. A last moment of hesitation. He must look like a civilian, he supposes, and wonders how long it will take to feel like one, if he can remember how to have a normal job; civilian life feels like jumping out of an airplane into a foreign land without a working parachute.

He’s lost friends, from one end of their war to the other; some dead, some wounded. Toye wounded in Bastogne. Bill Dukeman lies buried somewhere in Holland. Chuck’s still in hospital, and Shifty. Shifty will recover; Chuck might not. He’s written to Babe and Ramirez but he’s lost all track of Liebgott. So he doesn’t want to lose any more than he has to, now.

He thought about writing to Joe often, in Germany and Austria, in the times he spent alone in the Austrian woods. Even once the war ended, he never did. Instead he’s here, four months after getting back to the States, outside the door he thinks is the right door.

Maybe he wants it to be the wrong door. Or the wrong time: for no one to answer.

But he knows that’s untrue. He’s trying to understand why he’s still just standing here, without knocking, after travelling back across country to be here. He’s had this vague sense of something indefinable, some uneasy feeling of loss or failure or something like it, since he last saw Joe Toye. A sense of something left undone, maybe. Back in Thalem, he’d decided that, if he survived to make it back home, he’d find out how Toye was doing. And because he can’t seem to put it in writing and because he doesn’t want to rely on belated, piecemeal, secondhand reports he has to see Joe in person.

He’s been overthinking this whole thing, almost certainly. Second-guessing himself, second-guessing Toye. It’s just a visit, like he might pay any of the guys he served with.

Toye has never written to him either. There could be any number of reasons for that, but the one he doesn’t want to admit to being unsettled by is the possibility Toye doesn’t want to see or hear from him at all. The prospect of short uncomfortable conversation, and then his leaving, finding somewhere outside to sleep or a cheap hotel or looking up Babe while he’s here, and explaining nothing to him.

 _Well_ , he thinks, more or less as he did most times before going into combat, _fuck it_.

He knocks on the door. And waits, again.

He hears someone inside. The clunk of wood against wood. The rasp of movement across a room. Then the door opens, and Joe’s inside, Joe’s there, he can see every trace of surprise in Joe’s eyes but there’s no dislike, no pretence of any kind. He can’t read any more than that.

Hey.

Hey, Joe says.

His voice is the same. He stands differently – of course – his weight half against the crutch. Earl can see the edge of shrapnel scars at his wrist, almost hidden.

The last time he saw Joe, he was lying in his own blood, his leg gone. And now the injury is healed, and that makes the year seem longer than he’s been able to comprehend since the war ended. The place where Toye’s right leg was doesn’t shock him, but something about how the empty fabric is folded up does. He doesn’t think he shows it.

He’s different, changed. Out of uniform – McClung’s not even used to himself out of uniform. But his face is the same, and his voice.

Well, Joe says, and it’s quiet, not hostile, you coming in?

Sure, he says. If you get out the way.

Joe lets him in. He looks reassured, Earl thinks, and privately he is too.

The door opens into the kitchen. The place is small, mostly bare, neatly kept for the most part. There is a table, of which the legs are a little uneven, and two wooden chairs. A plate drying by the sink; a used mug on the counter. The scents of soap and cigarette smoke. Through the door a small hallway and another room, with a gramophone, a lamp on top of a cupboard, and another couple of chairs.

It all feels a little alien still, to him. Strange to have this kind of autonomy again, the absence of orders. Earl’s still getting used to sleeping entirely alone. It’s taken him this long to stop listening for shelling during the night.

Babe told me where you were.

Yeah, he’s been round a couple times, Joe says. Have you seen him?

Not yet.

He probably will, he thinks. It’ll be good to see him, whatever happens here.

They sit at the small, crooked kitchen table and talk, quite normally, about the war, what happened after Joe was shipped back. About Foy, Thalem, Landsberg, Bavaria, Austria; about who was wounded, who was killed; about the hospitals Toye’s been in; about what they know of the other men now. About the food, and the officers – Speirs replaced Dike and then nobody cared about the rumours; Nixon’s drinking; various promotions – and crossing the Atlantic again. They discuss the G.I. Bill and its usefulness to them. For the most part safe and neutral subjects, and much of it Toye’s already heard from others who did write to him, but it feels good to talk freely, without regard for company morale or insubordinate comments. The last time they could do this was over a year ago, in their shared foxhole, but then they had both understood where the limits were. Now it’s over and left behind in Europe, now they’re talking alone, those limits are gone.

They share whiskey, and cigarettes. The bottle’s black lettering comes off on their fingers and marks the cigarettes in turn. The last time they drank together was in England, before Bastogne, McClung thinks; the last cigarettes they shared were in their foxhole. He’d thought of the men they’d lost when they were in Germany, drunk on relief and Nazi liquor, and hated again all that they had lost and pushed the thoughts aside again, like he always did. Most days the thoughts stay pushed aside; there are some nights when they resurface. Then he finds himself sitting up, smoking, reading some magazine he’s not interested in, walking out alone in the dark, waiting for the thoughts to recede again.

There are other limits that are not gone. The things he wants to ask, like where they stand with each other now. The apology he wants to utter, for failing to reach Joe when it mattered, for never writing. The admission that he’d missed Joe, more than he’d expected to. All the sentences that haunted every letter he couldn’t write. The unsaid things that brought him here, and he still won’t say them.

Last January. Last January, they had dug in together, like before, in easy silence, but they had not been near each other when the shelling started. He’d taken cover in their foxhole. Joe was alone; Joe got hit. No matter how he’s tried not to, he’s thought of every way he could have changed things. Or wished Joe hadn’t come back from the Aid Station when he did, just stayed a couple of days longer.

Joe’s getting used to the crutches, he says; maybe he’ll try a prosthesis later. When he refers to it, offhandedly, it’s as if it’s a minor irritation. McClung thinks he could have predicted that. Toye’s always complained about everything except anything that matters. He lets slip the mine won’t give him a job now, nor the mill nor the foundry, but for now he’s got his backpay and the rent is cheap. He moves easily around the room when he has to, quick and strong, preferring to use one crutch rather than both.

Maybe there’s something a little awkward in Joe’s manner. It’s hard to tell. He keeps watching Joe’s eyes, trying to gauge further.

He doesn’t feel guilty about what they did in Bastogne, the fleeting warmth they found in each other. But maybe Toye does.

He doesn’t feel particularly sentimental about it, either. But the memory of the brief closeness got caught up in the pain of Toye being hit, the two things compounding each other, turning into a strange kind of guilt he doesn’t feel over any of the other men who were killed or hurt, though he’d cared about all of them.

Maybe Toye despises him for that night, though there’d been no trace of it back then. He’d known that was a possibility, before he came here. It’s why he didn’t try to ask for an invitation, just showed up unannounced.

Where are you living now? Joe asks, after a brief break in the conversation.

Colville, I guess.

He hasn’t thought about it enough to come to any decision yet.

Let me know where you end up, Joe says.

I’ll do that.

This would be a good time to apologise for not writing. He doesn’t. But he feels easier about all of it.

***

When evening comes, he makes ready to leave. Picks up his jacket from the back of his chair, picks up his bag. Joe scrawls his telephone number on an old envelope and gives it to him and Earl folds it up and puts it in the pocket of his jacket. Joe pushes himself up with one hand on the table and shifts his weight back onto the crutch and goes with him to the door. Earl looks through the window out across the street for a moment, only half listening to Toye trying to recount the names of any places he could stay at.

Shit, I don’t know, Joe says eventually. Should be enough places, should be cheap, especially for vets.

Doesn’t matter, Earl says absently.

If he heads to a bus station, he’ll find out somewhere to stay easily enough.

Hey, Joe says, bringing his attention back. You know, you can stay here.

Earl looks at him again, considering it.

He’s tempted. It would be easier, simpler to stay here than go anywhere else. And now Joe’s standing close, real close, and he should have been with them when they took Berchtesgaden and they’ve drunk maybe half a bottle of whiskey between them, and simplicity’s not the only reason he’s tempted.

Maybe he could stay.

The memory of that day, precise and brutal, comes back to him. The shells falling, the trees shattering around them, being too far from Toye to reach him or help him in any way, the smell of blood on the snow after. The feeling of something unsaid, unacknowledged, that had dogged him until the war’s end and after.

He thinks he sees it in Joe’s face, too.

Could do that, he says, still watching Joe’s eyes. And neither of them has moved yet. And he has no intention of backing down first.

Why was it so easy last time, he thinks. So easy to touch each other. One of them has to break this moment, one of them. He’d like it to be Joe.

Why does this scare him, this time, when he hasn’t been truly afraid since D-Day. Not this climbing gnawing fear.

He’d tried not to think on it, any of it. It hadn’t been important. He hadn’t wanted to grieve what they hadn’t had and wouldn’t have. But this feels like the last time, the sudden moment of mutual realisation they would both allow it to happen. Like last time, he knows he’s not wrong.

The hell with it, he thinks. Like jumping from a plane, like knocking on Joe Toye’s fucking door. He reaches out. Grips a loose fold of Joe’s shirt and closes the distance between them and kisses him.

He never kissed Joe before. There’s a burning shaking feeling inside him and he’s still half afraid. But Joe’s kissing him, still kissing him.

When he stops to catch his breath he finds he’s pressed against the other man, one hand on the crutch to help steady them both, one hand tight in the side of Joe’s shirt.

Joe’s looking at him, and the moment seems to expand and expand. It can’t be this long, can’t be as long as it feels. The closed door is next to them. He could leave, pull open the door, just go; it would be easy. As long as Joe doesn’t brain him with a crutch, he thinks wryly.

Fuck, Joe says softly. I don’t know what we’re doing.

Just pretend it’s real fucking cold, Earl says, and kisses him again.

Joe kisses him back, a warm steady weight against him, and Earl doesn’t think about anything until Joe murmurs in his ear, Well, this time we got a bed.

***

In the bedroom Joe sits down on the edge of the bed and lets the crutch rest beside him. He starts unlacing his boot. Earl, not wanting to stand and watch and wait unmoving, pulls his shirt off over his head and leaves it folded unneatly by the door. Takes off his boots. Joe tugs his shirt off too, so Earl takes it and leaves it on top of his own. He kneels down in front of Joe then and unbuttons the man’s pants. He lets his fingers slip under the waistband, strokes his thumb over the warm skin, in the moment before Joe finishes undressing.

It’s at that point in the evening where the light has turned from clear to fading, daylight turned quick to twilight, a greyish light through the window behind Joe. Above him, Joe’s eyes look almost black.

His hand still rests on Joe’s leg. Joe lets his fingers lie across Earl’s wrist. A reassurance, a relief.

Thought about writing to you, he says.

Joe reaches up to touch his ear, the angle of his jaw. It feels better than it should. He’s been telling himself for the last year none of this matters, none of it ever did. But here he is.

Thought about writing to you, Joe says.

He’s tempted to ask why Joe didn’t, but then he’d have to explain his own hesitancy, and it can wait, both of those explanations can wait. More important is the feel of Joe’s skin against his, the glimmer of yellow lamplight in Joe’s dark eyes as they watch each other.

Joe’s – beautiful, really, but he doesn’t know how it makes him feel to see the scars, crisscrossing askance over almost every part of him, over his right leg that has been amputated above the knee. Amputated first below the knee and then above, so he heard but hasn’t asked. He runs his hands across the scarred stump and across Joe’s left thigh, tenderness and reverence and guilt wrapped up in the touch, the guilt of not being able to prevent it, of making it through the war unharmed.

Don’t think I’m gonna be able to dance with you, Toye murmurs, and it takes McClung a moment to remember what he’s referring to. He’d forgotten that conversation, and it touches something in him that Joe remembers.

We’ll work something out, he replies, and Joe smiles, kind of, and Earl moves up to kiss him.

He keeps slowing down, waiting for Joe, still uncertain of what they’re doing. Last time there was no time to hesitate; the nearness of death scrubbed out every other fear. This room is quiet and safe and the moments keep stretching out, far too long, unnerving him.

Toye’s hands run over his, gentler than he expected. Are you OK? he asks quietly.

Yeah, he says, irritated with himself that it’s obvious, that the question is justified.

He shouldn’t be afraid now. He began this; he kissed Joe. He touched Joe in Bastogne; he kissed Joe in his house. He seems to have lost the ability to think clearly, the kind of blurring that gets you killed in combat. He wants to be here. He’ll leave tonight, or in the morning, but he doesn’t want to lose any part of this. He squeezes Joe’s wrist.

I’m OK, he says, and Joe has the decency not to ask again.

C’mon, Joe murmurs, gesturing towards the bed. He pushes himself back against the metal rails of the headboard and Earl crawls up beside him and Joe kisses him again, warm and sweet.

***

It’s good, better than he would have expected if he had thought to expect it, a little awkward but less awkward than before. They’re catching their breath and the room has almost gone dark around them. When he pulls the sheet up over them he finds the rest of his clothes strewn half on the bed and half on the floor.

Lucky I didn’t get my balls blown off, huh, Joe murmurs and it startles a laugh out of Earl.

That your idea of pillow talk? he mumbles, exhausted suddenly, not by sex but the release of a tension he’s carried a long time.

Better than you talkin to yourself.

Earl tries to glare at him, since he can’t think of a comeback. Joe doesn’t look like he cares.

He gets up and goes to use the bathroom. He cleans up and brings back a damp cloth to clean Joe up too. He hands it to Joe and says, You gonna be OK with this in the morning?

Not _that_ drunk, Joe says.

Earl’s near enough to sober himself. He got drunk a couple of times in Germany – hard not to, everyone else was – but not since then. He lies down again beside Joe.

Starting to think we’re running out of excuses anyway.

Earl turns his head to look at him. How do you mean?

Joe shrugs. Last time we didn’t drink and this time we’re not freezing in a fucking hole.

Speak for yourself, McClung says, with no heat to the words. Bastogne wasn’t an excuse, I couldn’t feel my goddamn feet.

Joe doesn’t argue, which might be some kind of first. This time?

Earl thinks about it, trying to find an answer that would cover everything. Giving in, he says: I missed you.

Joe looks at him for a long moment.

I’m glad you came by, he says in the end.

Yeah, I noticed that, Earl says, and Joe throws one of Earl’s socks at him and, like the self-respecting paratrooper he is, Earl throws it back.

He never anticipated any of this. It wasn’t what he came here for. He came to lay some kind of regret to rest and found something else in its place.

It wasn’t love, he thinks, or anything like it. Just the sense of an absence, something lost. He’d never been the kind to fall for a guy, or spend months wanting someone he couldn’t have. Throughout the war he did what he had to, fought well, kept others safe, never backed down from any of it.

What about you? he says. This time?

I don’t know, Joe says slowly. His thumb is rubbing distracting circles over Earl’s hip. Figured back then it was a war thing, but I knew maybe it wasn’t.

It’s quiet and simple and matter-of-fact. Earl doesn’t say anything more. Being here – no danger here or waiting, no death around them, no unaccustomed solitude – feels more comfortable than anything else has in years.

You still staying?

Yeah, I’m staying. He stares up at the ceiling, and adds: As long as you make the coffee.

Be quicker if you make it.

You askin me to stay so I can make you coffee?

Hey, says Toye. Shut up.

That makes him think of Bastogne again. He kisses under Joe’s ear, hoping to take away the images behind his eyes, of frostbite, bloody snow, bone splintering.

Joe’s alive, and he’s alive, and they’re both here, in the same place, in the same bed, and there’s no guilt or tension between them at all.

We should eat, he says, and Joe makes a sound of agreement and Earl passes him his clothes and his crutch before gathering his own clothes together.

***

Together they cook a meal on the stove out of some of the tins in Joe’s cupboard. The results are better than army food, borderline worse than hospital food, if Joe’s opinion is anything to go by. Earl says, Well, you bought this stuff, to which Joe says, not entirely correctly, Well, it’s your cooking.

Staying the night turns into staying a week, and a week turns into a fortnight, and then it’s almost a month. He visits Babe, and tells him almost nothing but stays in conversation for a couple of hours. He visits Bill, too, and thinks he just about succeeds in making a good impression on Bill’s new wife, Frannie, despite feeling like he’s half forgotten how to forge new acquaintances.

The nights with Joe continue, easier now and surer. They never even speak of not sharing the bed. In the third week he lets his family know he’ll be staying on here a while. In the second month they start splitting the bills. He’ll probably start looking for work here instead of going home. He doesn’t really care what work he does as long as it’s outside and he never has to remember hiding from shells in the cellars of Haguenau again.

He doesn’t know how long it’ll last between them. Maybe they’re just making up for lost time and when they have he’ll move on and pick up the pieces somewhere else. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t yet care about that, either. For now this is good. It’s been a long time since he was used to being alone.

Later when the doctors give Joe a prosthesis in place of the crutches, Earl helps him to practise with it and walks with him until Joe’s used to it. Not too close beside him, because Joe’s always been a proud guy, unwilling to accept help if he doesn’t have to, but Earl’s always been just as stubborn and he stays near. They both know Joe’s injury gives a justification to Earl living with him, if anyone ever asks. They hang net curtains for privacy. They keep the windows open and the gramophone playing quietly. They push back the kitchen table so they can dance.

**Author's Note:**

> [please go admire the beautiful edit Shoshi made](https://shoshimakesstuff.tumblr.com/post/638305064026587136/be-quicker-if-you-make-it-you-askin-me-to-stay) 🖤


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